Month: January 2016

Princesses get fewer lines than their princes in most new Disney movies, according to a new research study reported in the Washington Post. Sidekicks tend to be male too.

Female characters spoke more than males in classics such as Snow White and Cinderella, but that reversed with The Little Mermaid, in which Ariel trades her voice for the chance to live as a human and woo her prince.

“In the five Disney princess movies that followed, the women speak even less,” the study found. “On average in those films, men have three times as many…

Hawaii may ban teachers, counselors and psychologists from trying to change a child’s sexual orientation, reports the Washington Times.

California, New Jersey, Oregon and the District of Columbia have banned therapists from using “conversion therapy” to persuade teens to reject their homosexuality. “A bill introduced in Congress would ban conversion therapy nationwide,” reports The Atlantic. “In April, President Obama called for an end to these therapies for gay youth.”

In 1994, My So-Called Life introduced Rickie Vasquez, a gay teen who liked to use the girls’ restroom to put on…

“Kids need assignments that they can relate to.” Within today’s Edworld, one of the most pervasive notions is that students should be reading and writing about stuff they can connect to their personal lives. As educational outsiders have pointed out, this assumes kids can’t be interested in things that are distant, whether in time and place, from the mundane and familiar. It excludes the possibility that the long ago, the far away, or the esoteric, might engage children precisely because they are long ago, far away, or esoteric. But isn’t school supposed to open doors rather than close them?…

Things have been rather quiet over at the Snow Report of late. As you might imagine, the reasons for that are many and varied, but chief among them is the fact that I have been ridiculously busy with writing projects. Associate Professor Philip Mendes (Monash University) and I are in the final throes of editing an international text on leaving state care (to be published by Palgrave in late 2016/early 2017), I’ve just finished a book chapter with Professor Jacinta Douglas (La Trobe University) on psychosocial aspects of pragmatic language impairments across the lifespan (for a forthcoming…

Things have been rather quiet over at the Snow Report of late. As you might imagine, the reasons for that are many and varied, but chief among them is the fact that I have been ridiculously busy with writing projects. Associate Professor Philip Mendes (Monash University) and I are in the final throes of editing an international text on leaving state care (to be published by Palgrave in late 2016/early 2017), I’ve just finished a book chapter with Professor Jacinta Douglas (La Trobe University) on psychosocial aspects of pragmatic language impairments across the lifespan (for a forthcoming…